The Merry Misogynist

to deprive them of a few hours of sleep. They’d opted to leave their search for Crazy Rajid’s palace until the following night. Siri’s morning was occupied with sweeping imaginary worms off his desk and forming a philosophy of life in time for his death, and with having the strangled lady investigation dropped squarely on his lap.
    When two clearly drunk but ominously heavy men wandered into the morgue at nine, yelling and screaming with the scent of stale rice liquor on their breath, Siri was inclined to send them packing.
    “This is a hospital,” he said. “At least have the decency to sober up before you come staggering around here.”
    He didn’t have anything against drunks per se – goodness knows he’d been one often enough – but there was a time and a place. Nine in the morning in a morgue was neither.
    “You a doctor?” asked the less sotted of the two. “We’re looking for a doctor.”
    “I’m a coroner,” Siri told him. “Come back when you’re dead.”
    “What’s his name?” one man asked his colleague.
    “Who?”
    “The doctor they told us. Come and see Dr – shit, what was his name?”
    By now, Geung and Dtui were at the office door squaring up to the intruders, ready to throw them out.
    “Dr Sorry,” slurred the other drunk.
    “Siri,” said the first, “Siri Pai…something.”
    “I think you two should go away and come back when you regain possession of your minds,” Siri told them. He stepped over a sleeping dog that nobody else saw and came around to their side of the desk.
    “But the police sent us,” said the first man.
    “They sent you here? Why?”
    “We was looking for the inspector.”
    He held out a slip of paper with Phosy’s name and number written on it but dropped it and watched it float under the desk. His colleague fell to his knees to give chase.
    “Don’t bother,” Siri said. “I saw it.” But the second man was already on the trail of the elusive slip of paper. He tried to rise when he heard Siri’s voice but, forgetting he was under a desk, banged his head on its underside and crashed back to the floor. This caused both men to laugh hysterically.
    “Dtui, get my gun,” said Siri. Siri didn’t have a gun but Dtui ran off to get it anyway.
    “No,” shouted the first drunk. He threw his hands in the air. “Don’t shoot. The cop said if I could remember who told me about the invibisible rice worker he’d give me a half…I mean a full bottle of Thai rum.”
    It suddenly dawned on Siri what this was all about.
    “I take it you mean ‘invisible’?”
    “That’s what I said.”
    “The woman who works the fields covered from head to foot?”
    “Yeah!”
    “Who told you?”
    “He did.”
    He pointed to the legs of the second drunk, who had apparently passed out under the table.
    “Mr Geung, could you please extract this gentleman from under my desk?”
    Geung was stronger than he looked and had the large man out and in a sitting position in a matter of seconds.
    “Thank you,” said Siri. He leaned over the groggy driver and glared at him. “Hey, you!”
    “Me?”
    “Yes. You saw the woman?”
    “I did?”
    “The one they convinced you was invisible.” The man’s eyes stared ahead as if recalling a nightmare. “Oh, she was. She was.”
    “Where was she?”
    “Just a shape…nothing…inside the…”
    “Where – was – she?”
    “In the field.”
    “All right. My fault. Bad question. Where was the field?”
    “Where?”
    “The district.”
    “Ban Xon.”
 
    Ban Xon was only seventy kilometres from Vientiane and most of the road there was straight. Siri would have preferred to travel with somebody else, if possible in a car or truck. Civilai had a car, but he drove so slowly the twins would be reaching puberty by the time they got back. Neighbour, Miss Vong, had a truck, but she still wasn’t speaking to Mr Inthanet so there was no hope of getting help there. Judge Haeng could probably sign him out a Justice Ministry car, but Siri would sooner slide naked down a splintery plank than beg the boy for anything else.
    So Siri was on his Triumph, the hot air blow-drying the features off his face. Dtui had wanted to ride pillion, but there was too much of her now, and Siri feared the potholes and bumps might prematurely bring on labour. So he was alone: Easy Rider. He and Civilai had watched the film in Hanoi, dubbed in French. Siri wanted to look up and smile at the sky like Peter Fonda, but he knew